Mark Gibbs

What browser do you prefer? According to w3schools.com, which tracks browser usage of people interested in Web technologies and hence more likely to try alternative tools, as of April this year, 38.3% of us preferred Google's Chrome, 35.8% went with Mozilla's Firefox, and 18.3% were still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (Apple's Safari and Opera were trailing way behind). Over the last year IE and Firefox have seen their shares decrease and only Chrome has gained share.

So, will these trends continue? Will Google continue to gooble up the browser market? Ah, gentle reader, you might think so or, indeed, hope so, but not if Microsoft has it's way.

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

-- Donald Rumsfeld

To state the obvious,, Microsoft is hugely important economically and culturally, and as Peter Parker (AKA Spiderman) was told by his grandfather: "With great power comes great responsibility." (Actually Voltaire said it first but he said it in French so that doesn't count.)

Part of Microsoft's great responsibility is supporting the products it sells, but that responsibility apparently has limits. When Microsoft initially releases a product it has "Mainstream Support," meaning it gets free security updates, performance and stability improvements, bug fixes, and, if you're very, very lucky, the company might even cough up a new feature or two.

At the end of last week I slipped on a wet floor, did a wild, balletic (or so I thought) attempt to recover, and wrenched my knee and leg. The next four days were a blur of X-rays and Vicodin. Luckily nothing broken, but I've had better weekends.

I spent much of Saturday and Sunday browsing the Web and adding to my growing list of "Stuff I Must Write About". As an experiment, this week I'm going to give you a tasting menu of products and services you really should check out ...

Last week here in Gearhead I discussed my ongoing saga of trying to get decent IP DSL service from AT&T U-Verse.

The Linksys PLSK400. Image from http://homestore.cisco.comSince that column, things have not improved and AT&T just dropped my line speed from 6M to 3Mbps. Somewhere along the way gremlins got into the system and now the latency I'm seeing has increased by roughly 10 times (att.com was averaging 45ms, now it's almost 450ms).

It's a fascinating aspect of modern culture that even as we gain ever greater access to information, news and entertainment there are puritanical groups in our society who repeatedly attempt to push us back to some better, nicer, safer, prudish and, in many ways, more ignorant society. And the villain in the quest to "clean up Dodge" is not always who it might appear to be.

By way of example, consider the following saga: In mid-February PayPal contacted online e-book retailers to warn them it in one week the company would begin enforcing a new policy that prohibited the sale of certain forms of erotica.

Back when I was young printing was complicated. Printer drivers were a nightmare of options and standards were rare. Now there are all sorts of standards for printing but the nightmare still continues. Even printers that sell for $50 have multiple drivers, often support various printing protocols, have multiple driver updates, and then there is the printer installation software.

Today most printers come with some kind of installation program and unless you're very careful you'll find a raft of bloatware installed along with your printer. There's something weirdly eccentric about the whole printer business.

The recent revelation that most of us are carrying around smartphones with embedded rootkits is both surprising and not so surprising. It's surprising because it makes you wonder, "How stupid can the carriers be?" It's not surprising in that we know the answer to that.

Here's what the furor is all about: Back in March an Android software developer using the alias "k0nane" noticed something odd: His Sprint-supplied Samsung smartphone included some fairly well hidden software which was always started when the device was booted and was always kept running. Moreover, it was very hard to stop the code.

A while ago I got over-excited about maps on the iPad and promised more of the same in the future and now, the future has arrived.

This week I have two iOS map apps that I think are really good. The first is Navigon North America published by Navigon AG which works on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

I will not be writing at length about Steve Jobs in this column because many other people are doing so and some of them far better than I ever could. All I'll say is that he was unique and the computer industry has lost an icon, a force, and, to many, a hero.

So, what I want to discuss this week is an idea that Jobs' company, Apple, once used extensively in their advertising: Think different.

When it comes to things like movies and museums, it's all about the experience. But that experience is going to change because it's no longer necessary or even as pleasurable to be at those venues as it once was and you know what will take their place? No? Read on.

What got me thinking about this was going to the movies to see "Our Idiot Brother," which I can recommend. It's entertaining, surprisingly funny, well-directed and altogether worth seeing. Alas, I can't be anything like as complimentary about the actual cinema the movie was shown in, which was the Century Downtown 10 (part of the Cinemark group) in my home town of Ventura, California.

From a U.S. Senate Hearing, April 27, 2010:

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan: The question is, did you bet big time in 2007 against the housing mortgage business? And you did.